Scripta User Guide

For help getting started, see also the Scripta Cookbook. Remember
to use the S option to "view source" in reading
this document.

Getting started

Content in Scripta is written in Asciidoc, a markup language.
Notice how Asciidoc is formatted — with little marks before
and after the words that are to be made italic or bold. The
marks help to give your text structure and visual form.
We will give just a few examples in this section to get you
started. You can write a great deal of text with just a few
bits of markup. You can learn more as you need it.

You wrote italic and bold text using inline formatting.
Here is one more example — what you might need to explain
computer code: json = { 'fred' ⇒ 'abc5176' }.

Lists

Let’s make a list:

Groceries

Bacon

Butter

Eggs

Cholesterol medicine

Numbered items begin with a period at the left margin,
followed by a space, followed by the item. The heading,
which is optional, has the form period followed immediately
by the text of the heading. For an itemized list, use asterisks
instead of periods. For lists that have sublists, use double
periods or double asterisks Etc. It is all very logical.

Links

Images

To upload an image, you need to be in the editor. Click on the
icon, fill out the form, choose the image, and
press Upload. When you are brought back to your document,
you will notice a blue button to the right of the
icon with text something like insert 1272.
The number 1272 is the ID number assigned to your
image. Put your cursor where you want the image to be and
click on the blue button. It will insert the link for the image.

As the image on the right shows, there are many ways
of formatting an image. Try float=left, align=center,
For more options, see XX. The same style of link can be used
for videos and audios — whether uploaded into scripta, linked to youtube or vimeo, etc. See XXX.

Mathematics

You can do ninety percent of
your writing with just a few markup codes. But when you need
something more sophisticated, the tools are there for you. One
of these is LaTeX, which you can use for in-line formulas like
\(a^2 + b^2 = c^2\) or for displayed formulas like
\[
\int_{-\infty}^\infty e^{-x^2/2} = \sqrt{2\pi}
\]

Theorem 1.

There are infinitely many primes.

Theorem 2.

The series
\[
\sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{1}{n}
\]
diverges

Notice the LaTeX-like environments. Documents written
in Scripta can in fact be exported to LaTeX. Just use
the tool in the pop-up toolbar
in the editor:

Chemistry

Chemistry, like mathematics, has its own symbology. There
are in-line markup tools for chemical formulas and reactions,
e.g., \(\ce{ C12H22O11 }\). More elaborate structural
formulae can be handled as images, just as we did with
the butterfly.

You may want to look at the code example in single column
mode — the lines are a bit long for the two-column modes.

Wrapping up

Notice that how we did section and subsection headings — two equal signs, a space, and then the text for section
headings. Three equal signs for subsubsections, etc.

Warning

Some times your text comes out looking funny,
as in the next paragraph. That is because you did not
start our paragraph at the left margin. This is a feature,
not a bug. It is used when you need to preserve formatting
exactly.